When A Lovely Flame Dies
by jada jasmine
Summary: “We’re doomed, I think,” she says with a worried look in her eye as she reaches for someone who isn’t there. Chuck just nods his head and smirks. Marissa Cooper. Chuck Bass. And some kind of afterlife.


"If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there."

Anonymous

--

Truth:

Chuck Bass dies on a rainy day sometime shortly after saying goodbye to daddy dearest and writing Blair a love note that wasn't lovely at all, really.

His eyes open and there's a girl staring at him with big blue eyes. Blondes have never been his type, (Blair with her doe brown eyes and soft white skin and long chocolate ringlets have always fit perfectly enough for him) but he figures he can't be picky here and shoots her a smirk.

"Welcome to the poor little dead rich kid club."

The word dead throws him off.

"What the fuck?!"

--

Marissa calmly explains that his plane crashed on the way to Thailand. He wonders why he can't remember anything except black silk and Blair's voice, touch, legs, tears.

She shrugs.

"There must be a mistake in this ridiculous operation. I'm Chuck Bass."

She shrugs again, walking off towards the edge of the whatever this is and Chuck is left by himself with his name and no meaning here.

--

He doesn't know how much time has passed until she comes back. He's lost in the sea of white that apparently is the afterlife everyone is so desperate to know about.

It strikes him as ironic that Nate always looked so much better in white, but he's not sure why.

He's interrupted in his depressing musings by the girl ("It's Marissa. Marissa Cooper.") He stares at her expectantly, because he wants answers to important questions, not inane ones.

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

She's quicker than he expected her to be, but he thinks it's because her wide blue eyes are slightly glassy, as if she's always about to start crying.

"You tell me, Mr. 'I'm Chuck Bass'"

He only wants to play this war of words with one girl, so he rolls his eyes and pretends not to care.

"Just tell me what the hell's going on."

"I'll make sure and do that once I figure it out myself."

Somehow (it must be a trick of all the damned white light) she shimmers around the edges and disappears into a secret with a smile on her face and a laugh in the air.

--

Chuck doesn't believe he's really dead until Eric's voice starts ringing out around the white.

He follows it, sensing that someone finally came to pull him out of his Hendrix worthy drug haze but trips somewhere and falls from the white into his life.

Or, what used to be.

Because he's back at a funeral except this time there's no one there to make a scene because guess what? The troublemaker's dead and everyone else just files in quietly and does the right, respectful things.

At least there are a lot of people there.

He's Chuck Bass so he knew there would be, and he even smirks when he realizes the girl to boy ratio is off by about three to one.

Except even Chuck Bass is human and when Blair walks up to speak, hair immaculate in a ponytail with a big black brocade headband, his throat closes up and something that might be tears burn at the back of eyes.

He turns around (away from Blair and the red around her eyes, Eric retracing his scar, Lilly crying into an Hermes scarf, Serena and Nate holding hands with tears streaming down their faces) to find _her_ and it makes him so mad he could fire the entire staff of his hotel.

This girl (Marissa Cooper, he doesn't know why he's pretending he can't remember her name) is staring at him intently again with those glassy eyes and he just wants her to get the fuck away from him.

"You must be smart. I missed my funeral. Didn't figure it out in time."

He doesn't say anything as the people he loves (loved) shimmer like a mirage until they're gone and the whiteness is all encompassing again.

--

He realizes that he's still in an impeccable purple suit, and has the meltdown that Marissa's been waiting to see for a while now.

The jacket is torn off violently, followed by angry yanks at his tie that would bruise him if he hadn't already died. The top button is unbuttoned and he throws everything onto a pile in the middle of the white.

He's half naked and raises an eyebrow towards her.

She laughs at him, not with him, because Ryan's about to start dreaming and that's her cue to leave.

The last thing she sees is Chuck Bass looking down surprised at a gold heart on his sleeve.

"We get little things, at least," she says and then Chuck is replaced by a beach and Ryan grinning at her, and she kisses all the bruises on his face.

--

_This is the part of the funeral he doesn't see:_

_Blair delivers her eulogy with perfect grace and grips the stand so hard her knuckles turn pale white. _

" _I love Chuck Bass. I'm pretty sure he loved me too."_

_The speech is perfect because of course he did, and she's still Blair so she still makes the speech a little bit about her. On her way back to her seat she pins a gold heart onto the purple cushioning of the coffin. _

_She wipes the tears off of her face and walks tall in her five-inch Choos and hopes it's enough. _

--

She comes back from Ryan's dream (this time, it was the SnO.C., DJ never came at all, and Ryan held her close all night long while Death Cab played in the background) to find Chuck without some sleazy smirk on his face for once.

She finds it disconcerting.

"What is this?" He almost whispers it, is afraid to know the answers to the big questions because he shouldn't be here and this shouldn't be relevant.

"We're doomed, I think," she says with a worried look in her eye as she reaches for someone who isn't there. Chuck just nods his head and smirks.

After everything he's done, it's not like he doesn't deserve it.

--

Chuck learns how to slip into dreams just by watching Marissa do it. It's kind of the same as the funeral, really.

Voices come and images flash across the white and he follows whichever ones he can while he can.

The first one he goes to is Blair, and it's the week that never was in Tuscany even though she's dressed in Audrey Hepburn's clothes from Roman Holiday. He leaves before she wakes up because it's too painful for him to see what he missed and Chuck Bass has really always been a coward.

After that, he spends time in easier dreams. Like Nate's.

--

In between dreams the two usually sit and talk together, because for whatever reason they're the only two people on this slice of heaven/hell/purgatory.

"I want to see my mom," Chuck breathes out one day into the silence.

Marissa doesn't even turn her head towards him, just kind of nods and says, "Yeah, me too."

He doesn't bother to correct her, (mine is dead, yours is alive), but he looks down at her hand covering his with a confused look in his eyes because he doesn't hold hands.

(Chuck and Blair holding hands, Chuck and Blair going to the movies)

At least he didn't before he died.

--

Marissa crawls out of an especially good dream with Ryan (but Seth and Summer were there too which is just so much better) and Chuck is waiting for her.

He kisses her, but for some reason's she's been expecting it for a while now, so she doesn't flinch at the smell of pot on his tongue and he keeps tasting the Balboa Bars on hers.

_It's not like you're cheating on Ryan, _she argues with herself, _you're dead. And he's sleeping with Taylor Townsend. And he's getting older because I can see it in the lines that crop up on the face I memorized. And he dreams about me less. _

The last cut is the deepest this time, Cheryl Crow song be damned, and Marissa knows it's only a matter of time before he stops dreaming about her at all.

--

"What do you miss the most?"

Marissa's feet are dangling over the edge of their world, and it makes her seem younger than she is.

"Chanel. Or vodka."

After pausing for a second, she reiterates the question back to him as an afterthought.

"What about you?"

He looks down at his suit and suddenly feels cold.

"I could use a scarf. Or some scotch."

They sit in silence (they usually do) and think of the people they left behind.

--

When they have sex, the words 'Ryan' and 'Blair' are echoed into the room but 'Chuck' and 'Marissa' are etched into their skin and that's how they know they're making progress.

They both still go to separate ends of the country every night to slip into dreams that aren't rightfully theirs, and that's how they know they aren't really going anywhere at all.

--

"You smell nice today."

"Acqua Di Gio."

Marissa doesn't point out that Acqua Di Gio doesn't smell anything like fresh flowers.

--

_This is what Chuck doesn't see:_

_Blair puts fresh peonies on his grave while Dorota weeds the area around it and some things (read: love) just kick death in the ass for the fun of it. _

--

"Don't you get it, Marissa? God is just fucking with us!"

Chuck's had enough, enough of the white, enough of no Blair, enough of no everything.

Marissa fights back for once, because she did that all the time when she was alive and she's sick of playing the calm one.

"Really? Well he's been fucking with me for almost four years now so you just have to get used to it!"

The screams stop echoing and Chuck would kill for some music, preferably The Airborne Toxic Event or even the Virgins, but nothing comes (surprise, surprise) and Marissa flits off, annoyed, into somewhere he will never know.

--

When Marissa's gone and Chuck doesn't have the energy to watch the people he loved move on from him, he says things.

Words like, "I love you," are stuttered out at first, but with practice start rolling off of his tongue like poetry and he even manages to attach the word Blair at the end of the phrase eventually.

Marissa comes back once, hears him talking to himself about love, and responds with, "Thank you."

Chuck scowls and walks away from her.

--

_This is what Chuck doesn't know:_

_One morning Blair wakes up feeling happy and the ghosts of the words "I love you, Blair," in her eyes. Love kicks death's ass once again._

--

There's never a happy ending, at least not for him, and that's one of the only things he really truly learned when he was alive.

But Marissa leaves less and less and he can't bring himself to see Blair with Carter Baizen's arm around her waist at night and so he leaves less and less too.

They sit in the white with her hands held over his, and Chuck wonders what will come next.

--

**AN: Random, I know. But I can't seem to stop writing all these crossovers! It's a disease, I tell you, a disease! Anyways, I'd really love it if you REVIEWED. Yep, that's it. I own nothing, title courtesy of the song "Smoke in Your Eyes". **


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